LTSP

From GTALUG

LTSP -- Linux Terminal Server Project

LTSP provides "thin client" support. That is, you connect a bunch of diskless computers that run very little more than the Linux Kernel and the X Window System to a central server that hosts applications (perhaps a web browser, like Mozilla or a document system like OpenOffice.org).

The individual computers don't need to be terribly powerful as they aren't doing much work beyond displaying output from applications.

There is even a savings of resources on the central server where the applications run, as, even if 10 users are running the Firefox web browser, there only needs to be a single copy of the Firefox binaries and associated libraries in memory. If they were running the applications on separate machines, there would be 10 copies of the application...

In principle, this is a way to reuse elderly computer hardware. Machines not powerful enough to run large applications may still be sufficient to provide display services.